The reader may think that the statements here presented show some inconsistency in the theory and plan of salvation according to the doctrines of the Norse mythology. We admit that there _seems_ to be some inconsistency, but let us ask, is not this charge also frequently made against the Scriptures? Is not the church, on this very question of the plan of salvation, divided into two great parties, the one insisting on faith and the other on works? The one party quoting and requoting Paul, in his epistle to the Romans (iii, 28), where he says, that man is justified by _faith_ without the deeds of the law; and the other appealing to James’ epistle (ii, 24), where he says, that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. And as the most eminent divines have found harmony in the principles of the Mosaic-Christian religion as laid down in the Scriptures, so we venture to assert that a profound study of the Odinic mythology will enable the student to elicit a sublime harmony in its doctrines and principles. The strict construction of the asa-doctrine appears to be this, that although man in the intermediate state, between death and Ragnarok, was divided between Odin and Hel, yet each one’s share of his being, after death, was greater or less according to the life he had lived. The spirit of the virtuous and the brave had the power to bear up to heaven with it after death the better part of its corporeal being, and Hel obtained only the dust. But he whose spirit, by wickedness and base, sensual lust was drawn away from heaven, became in all his being the prey of Hel. His soul was not strong enough to mount freely up to the celestial abodes of the gods, but was drawn down into the abyss by the dust with which it had ever been clogged. Perhaps the representation of Hel as being half white and half pale-blue had its origin in this thought, that to the good, death appeared as a bright (white) goddess of deliverance, but to the wicked, as a dark and punishing deity. When the drowned came to the halls of Ran, the sea-goddess took the part of Hel; that is, Ran claimed the body as her part, while the spirit ascended to heaven. Bondsmen came to Thor after death. This seems to express the idea, that their spirits had not the power to mount up with free-born heroes to the higher celestial abodes, but were obliged to linger midway, as it were, among the low floating clouds under the stern dominion of Thor;—a thought painful to the feelings of humanity, but nevertheless not inconsistent with the views of our ancestors in ancient times. But when the bondsmen, as was the custom in the most ancient Gothic times, followed their master on the funeral pile, the motive must have been that they would continue to serve him in the future life, or their throwing themselves on their master’s funeral pile could have no meaning whatever.